The Last Match

Elena served the ball with that same fierce determination she'd once brought to our marriage, her ponytail swinging, skin glowing in the morning light. I returned it mechanically, going through motions while my soul watched from somewhere far above the padel court—a zombie inhabiting its own decay.

"You're not even trying," she said, as the ball bounced past my racket.

"I'm tired, El."

"You've been tired for three years."

The truth was, I'd died inside months ago. The mortgage, the fertility treatments that failed, the way we'd stopped reaching for each other in the night—I'd become a walking corpse, and she was finally noticing the rot.

Afterward, we sat at the clubhouse terrace. She ordered papaya and yogurt, the fruit's soft orange flesh glistening like the hope we'd somehow misplaced along the way. She used to eat it every morning in Barcelona, during that year we were still capable of joy.

"Remember when we thought we'd be different?" she asked, spoon hovering halfway to her mouth. "That we wouldn't become... this."

"Different from what?"

"From everyone who settles. From people who stay because it's easier than leaving."

I looked at my hands—the hands that had held her through miscarriages, through job losses, through the slow erosion of whatever we'd once promised each other. They looked alien to me, these hands that belonged to a stranger.

"I'm not settling," I lied.

She laughed, and it was the saddest sound I'd heard in years. "No. You're just waiting to die. And I can't watch it happen anymore."

The papaya turned to ash in her mouth. I could see it in her eyes—she was already gone, had been for months. I was the only one still haunting this grave.

"Check out is at noon," she said, standing up. "Don't make this harder than it needs to be."

I sat there alone with the half-eaten fruit, surrounded by the lively sounds of strangers' laughter, realizing too late that ghosts don't always realize they're dead until someone finally walks away and leaves them behind.